Steps to independence 'not clear yet' - Plaid MP

Liz Saville Roberts "couldn't tell you a time frame" for Welsh independence

A Plaid Cymru-led Welsh government would provide "an opportunity" to discuss Welsh independence, but the steps to achieving it "are not clear yet", according to the party's Westminster leader.

Liz Saville Roberts told the BBC Walescast podcast that the current devolution settlement had not delivered health and education services worthy of "fanfare" and "independence has to be the next rational step" but there was no "time frame".

A Senedd election will take place in May 2026 and recent polling suggests Plaid Cymru and Reform are attracting the most support from voters.

Plaid leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, has ruled out holding an independence referendum in the first term of a Plaid Cymru government.

Asked how Plaid Cymru's leadership might get to the position where they were comfortable pushing for an independence referendum, Dwyfor Merionnydd MP Saville Roberts replied ''I think that the stations of the cross are not clear yet".

Plaid would be making the argument that public services in Wales "could be so much better if we had additional powers, if we had additional funding," she said.

"In the end" she said, "and it might be a slow process because it has to be chosen by the people of Wales, as a party we will be walking towards independence".

Saville Roberts said that at every stage the focus would be arguing that Wales "could do better if we have more resources".

She said Plaid Cymru in government asking for greater powers and being refused them by a UK government would show "what the potential of a different constitutional set up could mean for Wales".

"What we've had for devolution so far has not delivered more effectively in the way we hoped it would do," she said.

"The potential of independence has to be the next rational step, but I couldn't tell you a time frame."

Liz Saville Roberts is originally from Eltham in south London and she became interested in Wales as a thirteen year old after reading the Mabinogi, a collection of medieval Welsh folk tales.

She said there was "no Welsh family connection" at home, but "for some reason we had a teach yourself Welsh book in the house and I used to work my way through that."

She went on to study Welsh and Irish at Aberystwyth University and stayed in Wales, working as a journalist and becoming a Plaid Cymru councillor in Gwynedd before being elected to the UK parliament in 2015.

She said speaking even a little Welsh means "you belong to something. It's something that gives you a robustness and strength to face the world."

Her first cousin is the artist Jenny Saville, famous for her large-scale paintings of fleshy female nudes some of which have sold for millions of pounds.

"I don't know her very well," said Saville Roberts, "I think I last saw her when she was about four years old."

But she is a fan of the work, "she has a way of depicting motherhood which takes the virgin and child by the scruff of the neck and shakes it up, which is excellent", she says.

"I'm very proud to have that family connection!"